Estonian e-resident Rie Sakurai is half Japanese, half Kazakh, was raised mostly in Tokyo, and was educated in the US and Europe. She’s built on her global, polyglot background by going into business as an SEO specialist and writer, catering to firms that want to raise their profiles. She recently established an Estonian company called Kaizen Digital OÜ to better achieve her aims.
Rie wound up in Europe after finishing her first year of college in the US. She continued her studies in Prague and as she settled into European life, Rie also started a popular blog called Sakurai Panda, as well as a YouTube channel, that chronicled her studies and travels. These channels taught her about search engine optimization, and she gained experience that she began to share with partners. When Rie finished university, she decided to embark on a career as a freelance SEO specialist and media manager. Rie also offered clients translation services.
“My blog became my freelance portfolio,” Rie says. “When I graduated, I already had clients.”
That is how it all began.
International Background
After she finished her studies, Rie moved to Poland. She says she had a few reasons for the move. She had friends there, and her partner’s company assigned him to look after the Polish market, for example. She also just liked the city. Rie also continued to expand her freelance activities as an SEO writer and translator during this time and built up an impressive roster of clients including Swarovski, Workday, Semrush, Shopify Japan, Thomson Reuters and Bose.
Her greatest strength, she has found, is that she is multilingual. “There are not a lot of bilingual Japanese SEO specialists,” she notes. Rie offers Japan market entry services for foreign companies that want to expand into Japan, as well as for companies struggling in the Japanese market. She provides market research and competitor analysis with a strong focus on cultural intelligence. The specific services vary depending on the client, and Rie delivers tailored solutions best suited to each client’s situation.
Rie also has deep knowledge of and extensive experience working with people from various Asian countries. Rie’s connections to Korea come from the time when she studied at an international school in Kazakhtan for three years. Sixty percent of her classmates were Koreans and she struck up many friendships and got to know Korean culture well. She’s also worked with clients in other Asian markets, such as China and Thailand. She also learned French and Spanish while working as an au pair and studying in France during her undergraduate studies.
SEO and Japan Market Entry Consulting
But why did she even like SEO? Rie says she enjoyed her work because of the changing nature of the industry. Clients are involved in all different kinds of endeavors, and that means that her job is never boring. “If you are in SEO, you always have different clients in the food industry, in law, luxury goods, or furniture,” she says. “I just like researching new things and learning new things in general.”
She notes that the SEO industry is also constantly evolving because of Google and AI. “I always have to check the news to stay up to date on the latest technology and tools,” Rie points out. “But as I said, I’m always curious about learning new things.”
In the same way, Japan market entry consulting requires extensive market research. It’s essential to stay up to date with all kinds of information from political, economic, and legal perspectives. Gathering data from the most reliable sources and conducting thorough fact-checking demand significant time and focus. Rie says, “I’m used to this kind of in-depth research from my SEO experience.
Each client had a unique business that needed to drive traffic, and every page required optimization. So, conducting deep market research, keyword analysis, and competitor research is something I truly enjoy and have a lot of experience with.
“Thanks to my SEO background, I know many different kinds of digital tools that actually work, and I can conduct extensive research based on my own experience to obtain data that people outside the SEO industry often can’t access.”
Choosing e-Residency
Most of Rie’s clients to date have found her through referrals. She started Kaizen Digital OÜ to better manage her business and this is what led her to Estonian e-Residency. She spoke with accountants in Poland and looked around for different options for setting up her company.
As most of her clients are based in the EU, she ruled out setting up a British entity, and then settled on Estonia as the best way to serve her companies in the EU. Though Poland also offers a business friendly tax regime, she found Estonia’s e-Residency program to be straightforward and was also impressed by the service providers and the monthly cost of running a business.
“That’s why I chose Estonia,” she says.
Rie believes that Kaizen Digital OÜ, which she established in August, will generate even more client leads once its website is ready. She hopes to go public with the site next month, she says.
Though Rie has not yet visited Estonia, she has expressed interest in doing so. Officially her company is headquartered in the Telliskivi neighborhood in Tallinn, which is home to a lot of the city’s startups.
She is also keen to travel back to Japan, where she might set up a Japanese company to better serve her clients.
“I would like to have two homes,” says Rie. “I could be in Poland for a few months, then spend a few weeks in Japan. I do think about going back. I’d like to have a dual lifestyle.” With e-Residency, she adds, she can run her European business from wherever she happens to be.
